CLOSEDCASKET
To finalize and fulfill its seven-year adaptation of Charles Baudelaire’s scandalous, debauched 19th-century classic Les fleurs du mal (“The Flowers of Evil”) as an epic illustrated song cycle, Theater Oobleck’s Baudelaire in a Box project culminates in the summer of 2017 with Closed Casket — a 15-hour festival presentation of the complete cycle, timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Baudelaire’s death.

Over the past seven years Oobleck has produced 12 episodes of Baudelaire in a Box, each featuring hand-cranked boxed panoramas drawn and painted by artist Dave Buchen and scored with original music and performed by an ensemble of musicians and singers. Many of the compositions are set to original translations written expressly for this project.

Each episode features a unique ensemble of musicians, ranging from solo performances to an eight-piece band, and includes composers and performers from some of the most highly regarded outfits in Chicago, such as Mucca Pazza, Bobby Conn, Expo 76, Matchess, Tallulah, and Azita, as well as Theater Oobleck regulars Jeff Dorchen and Chris Schoen. To this Oobleck has added luminaries from the music scenes of Chapel Hill, NC, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and New York City.

Baudelaire in a Box related items:

A huge THANKYOU to all the dedicated artists, performers, composers, volunteers, donors, and audience members who made Closed Casket an unbelievable… we’ll leave it right there. An Unbelievable!

It exceeded even our foolhardy dreams for it. We even found our way onto a segment on NPR’s All Things Considered!

We’ve turned our last crank. The scrolls of artwork have been cut into sections and given to our collaborators and supporters. But the project lives on in photos and videos (stay tuned for updates), as well as studio albums and EPs of music from the series, with more on the way:

Chris Schoen and Emmy Bean preview musical selections from Theater Oobleck’s upcoming Closed Casket: The Complete, Final and Absolutely Last Baudelaire In A Box, a project setting all of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal to music and performing it in tandem with scrolling illustrations. Following a brief presentation, the performers will be joined in discussion by Ira S. Murfin, on the experience of adapting, commenting on and annotating Baudelaire’s 150 year-old work through music, translation, and visual media.

At this very special air-conditioned performance, the band will perform a few songs from Baudelaire in a Box as well as other slow and gentle songs, and we will raffle off TWOFESTIVALPASSES — each an $85 value. Plus a preview of some Baudelaire merch, conviviality, and more. Our travel expenses for Closed Casket went well over budget so any additional monies will go to offset these unexpected costs.

Snail Band came into being in May of 2016 as part of Opera-Matic’s Joyful Passage: A Serenade to Humboldt Park, singing serenades of snails and slowness to a very secretive snail sculpture near the Humboldt Park Lagoon, with lovely lyrics by Cin Salach set to music by Ronnie Kuller as leisurely waltzes and unhurried tangos. Since then, Snail Band has slowed down various other Opera-Matic events in neighborhood parks, singing snail songs and performing instant odes generated by community event participants. Weegee’s Lounge is Snail Band’s first indoor venue, which is fitting, as snails are extremely photogenic and also very good at lounging.

We sometimes talk about crankies being a kind of low-tech proto music video. And that’s true! But sadly you can’t share them very easily on social media. So, please to enjoy this newfangled Official Music Video from our latest Baudelaire In Box album, Unquenched, available now at our Bandcamp site!

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the death of the great poet Charles Baudelaire, Oobleck is bringing 50 performers, composers, & musicians together from all over the world for a gigantic festival of song & image. But we need your help!

The King Of Rain is available now as a digital download ($9) or CD ($12) at our Oobleck Bandcamp store. CDs come with a 20-page booklet featuring song lyrics and original illustrations by Oobleck founding member Dave Buchen.

This seventh episode of Theater Oobleck’s Baudelaire in a Box sets lively new English translations of poems from the 1861 edition of Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil to witty acoustic songs played by a six-piece ensemble…

The translations can be playful too—somehow I doubt Baudelaire’s original text uses “hummus” for a rhyme. Only once, on Sad Brad Smith’s rendition of “Grieving and Wandering,” does the troupe match bleak music to bleak verses, and the effect is so wrenchingly mournful it’s almost startling.